The Associated Press reported on October 10 that Internet 2—the federally-funded research network that is used by universities, research institutions and some companies—has been running at 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) since late August, and plans are in the works to bump speeds yet again in another 12 to 18 months, to 400 Gbps.

Internet 2 is run by a consortium of university partners, and managed by Level 3 Communications, the Colorado-based Internet backbone carrier.

The AP story notes that the 100 Gbps network allows Internet 2 participants to use a single, dedicated 10 Gbps channel for specific applications. The article mentions that physicists who want to acquire enormous datasets from the new Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research are likely to be among the early users of such channels.

A 10 Gbps channel can download 1 megabyte of data in 0.0008 seconds; a typical movie in uncompressed digital format could be downloaded in about 5 seconds.

AT&T today bought into the 700 Mhz market by purchasing Aloha Partners, a move that gives AT&T potential broadband wireless coverage of 196 million people in 281 markets, according to the news release. The spectrum covers 72 of the top 100 and all of the top ten markets in the U.S.

As Om Malik noted today, the purchase appears to steer the price of the 700 Mhz auction scheduled for January 24, 2008, when the A and B spectrum blocks will be auctioned off by the FCC. Verizon, Google, eBay and other companies are considered likely bidders. (The FCC moved the auction date from January 16th to January 24th yesterday, October 8.)

Aloha Partners has been the country’s largest owner of the lower band of the UHF-TV spectrum, channels 52-59. Aloha had planned on using channels 54 and 59 to broadcast television to mobile phones, via its HiWire subsidiary. But so far it’s not clear what AT&T will do with this spectrum. Some of it is occupied by television broadcasters in specific markets, but they are supposed to give it up by February 2009. If and when AT&T clears out the spectrum, it can support up to 50,000 watts of power, meaning AT&T could quickly have a national broadband wireless network.

UPDATE: One wonders if this was part of Apple’s consideration for signing up with AT&T for the iPhone. Did Apple know something in advance?

Wired is featuring a story on Nicholas Reville of the Participatory Culture Foundation, a nonprofit organization “with a mission to build tools and services that give people more ways to engage in their culture.“ One of the PCF’s main projects is Miro, a free and Open Source video player for digital files. The Wired article notes, “Ultimately, the foundation’s goal is to promote and build an entirely new, open mass medium of online television.“ The nonprofit group has 12 full-time employees and is supported by grants from a variety of supporters, including Skyline Public Works and the Mitch Kapor, Surdna, Mozilla and Knight foundations.

Anne Zelenka has posted an interesting article on GigaOm, with the title “From the Information Age to the Connected Age.“

“Today’s version of the web, whatever you want to call it,“ she writes, “is notable because people and hardware and information and software and conversation are all mixed together into a hyperconnected network. Maybe instead of getting tangled up in discussions of what’s web 1.0 vs. web 2.0 vs. web 3.0, we might look instead at another shift: how the web enables us to move from one era into another, from the Information Age to the Connected Age. You can see this shift both in the practices of individual workers and in the strategies of technology companies.“

Zelenka speculates that the old paradigm of the Information Age was one of the “knowledge worker,“ and the new paradigm of the Connected Age is ruled by the “web worker,“ yet another sort of Microsoft-Google comparison represented in this chart:

Zelenka acknowledges that most web workers will pursue a “hybrid” model, and that these categories are not meant to be descriptive but suggestive of new ways of thinking about trends.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that “citizen journalists” in Myanmar have been using cell phones and blogs to get out news of the military crackdown in the country, following mass protests sparked by dissenting Buddhist monks. Many of the reports have been going to an exile publication about Myanmar, based in New Delhi, called Mizzima News.

The WSJ article, by Geoffrey A. Fowler, says, “In the age of YouTube, cellphone cameras and text messaging, technology is playing a critical role in helping news organizations and international groups follow Myanmar’s biggest protests in nearly two decades. Citizen witnesses are using cellphones and the Internet to beam out images of bloodied monks and street fires, subverting the Myanmar government’s effort to control media coverage and present a sanitized version of the uprising.“

But now there are reports that the military junta in Myanmar has cut off Internet access in the country, blocking the bloggers and others sending images and text over the Internet. Ko Hitke, a blogger who has been featuring reports and images from Myanmar, writes today that “I sadly announce that the Burmese military junta has cut off the internet connection throughout the country. I therefore would not be able to feed in pictures of the brutality by the brutal Burmese military junta.“

One of the images that made it out of Myanmar was of 50 year-old Japanese video journalist Kenji Nagai, who worked for Agence France-Press (AFP), and who was killed in the violence.

NYC TV, the official television station of the City of New York, has gone online, with an “on demand” video channel. Clips can be e-mailed to others, or users can grab a link that calls up a video clip, like YouTube.

NYC TV is mostly a channel for promoting New York City, and features interviews, performances, short documentary clips and other features about New York City’s attractions, entertainment, food and cultural events.

The City of Austin has relaunched its Grants for Technology Opportunities (GTOPs) program, which provides small grants to Austin nonrofit organizations working on “digital divide” issues, such as education, serving senior citizens, technology access to low-income residents, workforce development, etc. Applications for the grants, and more information on the program, are available on the City’s GTOPs Web site.

The City’s Office of Telecommunications & Regulatory Affairs (TARA) is also looking for reviewers for the GTOPs program, people to be part of the selection committee that awards the grants. There is an application for that volunteer position on the same Web site, under “Application.“

As expected, a presentation tool (like Microsoft’s PowerPoint) has now joined the suite of applications available through Google Apps, the free online applications that also include a word processor, calendar, spreadsheet, e-mail and photo gallery. Google’s blog says the presentations created using this tool “can be edited, shared, and published using the familiar Google Docs interface, with several collaborators working on a slide deck simultaneously, in real time. When it’s time to present, participants can simply click a link to follow along as the presenter takes the audience through the slideshow. Participants are connected through Google Talk and can chat about the presentation as they’re watching. Not wanting anyone to feel left out, we’ve made the presentation feature available in 25 languages; Google Apps customers can also access it as part of Google Docs.“

Google has prepared a YouTube video about how to use the presentation tool, which can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRqUE6IHTEA.

The New York Times announced today (Monday, Sept. 17) that their online content available only through paid subscriptions via “Times Select,” will become free as of Wednesday, September 19. The material available only to subscribers has covered the Times’ top-tier columnists, including Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Tom Friedman, David Brooks, Bob Herbert, Frank Rich, Gretchen Morgenstern and others. After Wednesday, the subscription service will go away and this material on the Times’ Web site will be available without charge.

Critics of the Times Select experiment pointed out that walling off valuable contributors, like columnists, limited their availability and constrained the reach and influence of the Times’ highest paid writers. New York Times management eventually had to concede, apparently, that the potential for online advertising revenue outweighed the estimated $10 million in annual revenue coming from roughly 227,000 paying subscribers.

The extension of free services applies also to Times’ archived materials. Current Times Select subscribers will receive a pro-rated refund. Details are on the Times’ Web site at this link.